


Chasing Home

by Thejordanandhervices



Series: Fairy Tail Works [1]
Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-04-17 08:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4659189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thejordanandhervices/pseuds/Thejordanandhervices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm in my underpants in a laundromat waiting for my clothes to get washed and your clothes are in the machine next to mine and I noticed that when you put them in they were all covered in blood." AU</p><p>An Alternate Universe prompt from Tumblr I meant to be a one-shot, but accidentally turned into a multi-chapter fic. Probably about four chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Blood in the Wash

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! Here's the AU I promised in Alternate YOUniverse. If you haven't checked that out, you should. It's a series of NatsuxLucy one-shots I have. This got it's own spot because it ended up longer that I imagines. Enjoy!

“Damn!” Natsu mumbled, looking down at his clothes to find them stained with soda. He glanced around his apartment, surveying the empty pizza boxes, beer cans, and boxers. He got off the couch and picked up a pair of pants that didn’t look too dirty and sniffed. 

“Oh god!” He yelled, dropping them as tears sprang to his eyes. Sighing, he picked them up again and stuffed them into the nearly-forgotten hamper collapsed under a pile of festering clothes. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been to the laundromat, which was a pretty good indication that it was time to go. 

***

Stuffing as many articles of clothing into the washing machine as he could, Natsu enjoyed the way women, and the occasional man would stare at his exposed muscles. He stood there in nothing but hot pink boxers, trying to get his money’s worth out of the stupid machine when the most stunning blonde he had ever seen strode in with a trash bag of clothes slung over her shoulder. 

He was about to say something when she started pulling clothes out and putting them into the washing machine next to his. His mouth dried as he recognized the unmistakable sight and stench of fresh blood. He caught her eyes and swiftly looked back down at the machine he was using. He had caught the sight of blood on her ear. Could she have killed somebody? He thought. There’s no way that could all be period blood, not that he was all that familiar. Maybe she’s a nurse? But don’t they wear scrubs?

“So. . .” Natsu began. “Rough night?” Okay, maybe that was a bad idea. She looked up sharply, long pony tail flicking around her shoulders and catching on her rather well-endowed chest. Her eyes were wide, pupils dilated. Natsu looked behind him, but the place was empty except for him, the steady humm of machines letting him know that they wouldn't be alone for too long. His eyebrows came down to shade his dark eyes. “Are you in trouble? Do you need help?”

She mimicked his movement, searching for danger before coming out of her slight hunch and straightening her shoulders. Without speaking she adjusted the strap on her heels and zipped up her leather jacket. “I’m fine.” She said finally, not looking him in the eye. “Just an accident.”

“That looks like an awful lot of blood to be an accident.”

“You’re showing an awful lot of skin to be taken seriously.” She retorted without even a glance. 

Natsu’s face tinged the color of his loud hair. “You clearly haven’t taken a proper look. Nothing about these abs says “joke.””

She did glance then, just for a second before slamming the door on her machine and dispensing a few coins into the slot to start it up. “Well,” She said, “It was nice to meet you.” She turned from him then, but at the door she hesitated for a moment, “And your abs.”

With the barest of a smiles she was out the door and into the night. He burst through the doors after her, but she was already gone. He waited for her to come back for her clothes, but by the time all three of his loads were done, she still had not returned, but he realized he never expected her to. So instead, he took her clothes from the washing machine and dried them with his spare change, feeling all the while like a pervert handling some of her more delicate pieces. “Who wears lacy black underwear to kill in? He thought, throwing it in, completely unaware of how the dryer would ruin them. 

When he was done, he gathered all of his things, and all of hers (a stunning collection of BLACK) and started the slow walk back, loaded down with clothes, which, in bulk, was much heavier than he imagined. He spent the rest of the night folding and putting away his clothes, and folding hers. He felt bad about the panties, but he guessed that’s what you get when you abandon clothes in the washing machine of a second-rate laundromat. Not that he was stealing them! He just didn’t think they should be left there. Whatever she did, it had left somebody without a pulse. He had been in too many street fights not no know how much blood it took to kill somebody. 

Shaking his thoughts free of the past, Natsu felt the slick feel of blood on his own hands, though they were clean. After a shower he cleaned his apartment into the small hours of the morning, such as he never had before (literally). Though he cleaned, he felt no less dirty and finally realized that the only escape he might get tonight was from the sweet oblivion of sleep. Unfortunately, he wasn’t so lucky, for the blood he had helped wash away followed him into his dreams.  
***

“Please! Please don’t! I-I have a family and if I don’t come home-.”

“Shut up!” The man hovering above him snarled, the tips of his dark hair dyed with blood. 

“Dragon!” He called. “Get over here and finish this.”

With the flick of his wrist, the knife he had been holding was spinning at Natsu’s face. Less than an inch away he caught it in his first and middle fingers without a single twitch to show surprise. He advanced on the man, face impassive, but screaming inside. The man covered in his own blood before him was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He had extorted money from countless families under the guise of an insurance broker. Many of the families barely had enough to get by. Thanks to this leach, dozens had starved to death in the slums after he abandoned them without insurance, and without a dime. 

Even still, Natsu cringed at the thought of ending his life. He had been on the streets for years and had seen every horror imaginable, even after he joined the gang and got a place to sleep, the violence didn’t stop, not that he expected it to, he was just too close to starving to care all that much. But this was the first time he had ever been ordered to kill. He was usually in charge of intimidation and “roughing people up” but this was a whole other ball park. 

Kneeling down, Natsu put his knife to the man’s throat. “You’ve ruined countless families. Why is yours so special?”

The man spluttered with incoherent terror, but speech ultimately failed him. Wrinkling his nose at the thick, sweet stench of blood, his face transformed into what looked like a snarl. Steeling himself against the horror, he drew the blade heavily under the man’s jawline. Hot blood sprayed him in the face as the life bled out of him. He knew he could never un-see this man’s face, never outrun the memory of killing. 

He looked down at his hands, hear racing, chest heaving. The stench was too much, Natsu threw up violently on the ground. Rolling away from the new stench, he saw a dark outline of a man hovering over him. “You’ll get used to it,” He growled, and walked away, leaving Natsu to pick himself up. When he turned to where he had committed his first murder, all he saw was a large pool of blood. The body had already been disposed of.  
***

“AAaaaahhhhhhhhh!” Natsu screamed, rolling out of bed and crouching on the floor. Covered in sweat, he collapsed onto the hardwood, panting. Shivers crawled up and down his spine, leaving goosebumps in it’s wake. Normally dreams fade when one wakes up, but this had been a memory of a night Natsu has tried nearly everything to forget. 

That night earned him the name Red Dragon, because when he had stood up from the man’s side after he had stopped gasping for air, Natsu had been covered in his blood. He had been ordered to kill many times after that, but he never got used to it. How did you get used to ending someone’s life? Taking it like it was your to have?

Even when he had finally managed to escape, he could hear the scraping breaths of the dying. When he got a job, a decent apartment, even friends. He could never tell anyone about his past. He wasn’t so much worried about going to prison for the things he had done, he deserved that much (though he couldn’t ever work up the courage to turn himself in) it was what THEY would do if they found him. You don’t just run away from a gang like that. If Natsu were discovered, he would die. He doubted he would even be safe in prison. There were so many criminal connections, there would probably be fifteen different attempts on his life even before his first hearing. 

Soft fur tickled his nose as his cat walked slowly in front of him, begging to be paid attention to. Natsu checked his bedside clock, five PM, it read. He had slept through the day. “Sorry Happy, time to go to work.”  
***  
“Shit! Aw hell, you’re kidding me!” Lucy cursed, walking back to the laundromat she had abandoned her last outfit in. The idea was to leave the clothes in the washing machine to get rid of any evidence linking the murder of a lower-tier gang member to her. She had only needed information, and look where it got her! She left the fucking flash drive in the pants pocket. Thank the gods it was waterproof. 

Lucy came up short, she was sure this was the washing machine she had thrown her clothes into. She knew because it was right next to where that idiot in the pink boxers was doing massive amounts of laundry. . . Damn him, that pervert TOTALLY STOLE HER CLOTHES. 

Whipping out her phone, she pulled up the tracking app and located the flash drive via the stick-on tracker she had put on it. You could get anything at Walmart these days. She looked down at the phone and found it was in a residential area close by. Figures. Even someone with a physique like his couldn’t haul that much laundry very far. 

She followed it, black heels clicking ominously on the empty pavement. God only knows what time it was, but that didn’t matter. What did matter was getting back that information. She had spent years trying to find out what she needed to know, and once it was found out that someone copied the server of Zeref’s personal computer, there was going to be a most dangerous gang on the hunt for her head. He really should have made it harder for her, everyone was going digital now, and it wasn’t very original to use your birthday. 

By the time Lucy had come to terms with her failure and was ready to kick the shit out of whoever took home her blood-soaked clothing, she has arrived at the apartment complex of whoever was brave enough to cross Lucy Heartfilia. 

As a multi-talented woman in her early twenties, it was no issue for Lucy to break into the apartment of the panty thief. The place smelled of rotting pizza, though there was none that she could see. Neither did she see anyone around, which was not unusual for a week day. She should be quick though, he could be back at any moment. 

Flicking her light blonde hair of her shoulder, she began to search for her missing clothes. Lucy cursed having to wear black all the time; while good for surveillance, it wasn’t so good for tracking in the half-dark of an oncoming sunset and her tracking device was only so sophisticated. Finally, having turned the rest of the apartment upside-down, she turned to the one and only bedroom, grimacing. Lucy killed when she had to, but it wasn’t exactly her favorite pastime. She hoped it was empty. 

Slipping into the room, Lucy got down on all-fours and scanned the room for threats first and foremost, finding a figure lying prone in the bed on the other side of the small room. A cat slipped past her and she gasped, not noticing the feline in her earlier search. Shooting the man a fleeting glare, she began to navigate the piles of absolute shit in search of what she needed most. The last thing she expected was for him to practically jump out of bed and land on the floor in front of her, sweating like a pig. 

She watched him gain his composure and look at the clock glowing blue in the gathering darkness. Dark enough for her presence at the foot of his bed to go unnoticed — for now. 

“Sorry Happy,” he said to the cat circling him in what looked like concern, “Time to go to work.”

Natsu got off the floor and walked to the door. Lucy prayed with everything she had that he would just leave his room to go to the bathroom or eat breakfast, or ANYTHING besides what he did, which was walk to the wall, flip the light switch and turn around to face her crouched on the floor.


	2. Not My Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter is a little short, I just wanted to get something out to you guys for being so patient with me and my lateness. Enjoy.

Natsu’s eyes met Lucy’s. He rubbed them harshly, trying to dispel her image as a remnant of a dream. He couldn’t quite process the presence of the shapely blonde kneeling before him in a most undignified manner, and he certainly would have remembered any dream of her. 

“Holy shit!” He yelled, tripping over god-knows-what and landing on his backside. 

Now that they were on even footing, Lucy felt her trepidation slip away. Getting up and drawing to her full height, she looked down on him (a preferred way to look at people she needed to intimidate). Before he could come to his senses and ask why the hell she was in his house, Lucy decided to take the offensive. “Where are. My clothes.” She asked in a way that implied she wasn’t asking, but demanding. 

“You- you’re the girl from the laundromat.” Natsu stuttered, unable to think of anything else to say at that very moment. 

Lucy sighed, the last bit of anxiety slipping form her in the face of this obvious buffoon. “Yes. And it appears that rather than just leaving my clothes where they were, you decided to take them. Did you even consider how you would get them back to me? Or did you take them to sniff like some sort of pervert? Did you steal my clothes for fun?” She snapped. 

Natsu scrambled to his feet. Scratching the back of his head, he averted his eyes. “Honestly? I didn’t really think about that. I just figured with all that blood, you had enough problems on your plate. So I finished washing them, and I dried them. Sorry.”

Well, he was kind of cute, all ashamed like a pupp— “Wait you dried them?!” Oh dear God, she thought, this boy’s a genuine idiot. Drying her delicates.

“Yes, sorry. I did notice they looked a little smaller afterwards.” He looked at her then with a sad, yet rather hopeful look in his dark green eyes. They were almost like jade, or obsidian. . . Ugh, whatever. If she kept him happy maybe he wouldn’t ask how or why she broke into his apartment to find clothes she had abandoned at a grungy laundromat. Or how she knew they were here. 

“So,” he continued. “Why did you break into my apartment to get your--obviously abandoned--clothes back? And wait! How did you know they were with me in the first place?”

Damn. 

Rather than tell the truth (hah!), Lucy opted to lie through her teeth. “Well that outfit is very important to me and I WAS going to come back for it, but when I did, they were suddenly missing. I had a feeling it was you, you were the only person there, so I asked a people on the street if they saw a nearly naked man with bright pink hair. Turns out you’re not hard to find if you really try.”

Natsu winced, Lucy didn’t notice. 

The lie was working though, but to be sure, Lucy leaned ever so slightly forward so that her cleavage caught the light of the evening sun.

Natsu noticed. 

“So. . .” She said when he didn’t continue, “Can I have those back?”

“Yeah, they’re right here.” And true to his word, there they were, dried and neatly folded on his dresser. Even her underwear. She wanted to be angry, but the look on his face was too sad for her to be able to hold a grudge against him. 

“Look, I’m sorry I barged into your house and shamed you for just trying to be nice, even if it was a little stupid.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she steamrolled on, a hand up between them. “Stupid, but sincere. Thank you.”

He smiled wanly and glanced at the clock behind her. “Shit, I’m late for work!”

Years of working on the wrong side of the tracks had made Natsu wary of people, but also more confidant. He was proud of his ability to profile people in an instant. Lucy, he though as he ran around looking for his pants (now that they weren’t on the floor, they were harder to find (did he even have a pants drawer?!)), was clearly hiding something about herself. No sane woman would go searching for bloodied delicates in someone else's house, no matter how nice. Despite this, he could tell underneath it all there was someone else, a warm heart beating under the icy exterior. It was this that prompted him to say what he said next. 

“I have to go -like now- but you’re welcome to stay, I don’t care. There’s your clothes, there’s the door, don’t step on Happy’s tail, bye.”

“Happy?” She asked, but the door was already clicking closed behind him. What a truly insufferable idiot, leaving a complete stranger alone in his apartment. One who broke in at that! He should have called the police. Why didn’t he call the police? Lucy’s thoughts were interrupted by the soft feeling of fur. 

“Meow!” Came a voice from Lucy’s feet. A beautiful Russian Blue was circling her ankles in search of hands to be pet with.

“Just as trusting as your master, I see. You must be Happy.”


	3. A New Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back to me! I decided to give this fic another shot at life. If you've read the previous two chapters, I suggest a quick re-read, as I've made some minor adjustments.

Natsu awkwardly ran-walked the five blocks to the club he bartended at. Even after giving up his more dangerous pastimes, he couldn’t completely get away from Magnolia’s night life. Thankfully, Fairy Tail was also home to a group of bikers who were prided themselves on being honorable and helped out in the community (for a price). This meant that the darker corners of Magnolia stayed away from Fairy Tail out fear, and THAT meant that the skeletons in Natsu’s walk-in closet stayed away. 

Natsu was flung from his thoughts with a hard slap from a gauntlet-covered hand to the back of his head. When his vision cleared, he wished it hadn’t. Erza, the bouncer, and also the woman who had made it her personal mission to straighten Natsu out was glaring at him with a fierceness that had him quaking. 

“Where have you been? You’re nearly twenty minutes late! Mira’s dead on her feet and can’t go home until you take over!”

Natsu side-stepped her slowly, as she yelled, edging through the door. “Well then, I should probably go do that!” He said as he ran down the hall. As soon as he couldn’t see her anymore he slowed to a walk, Erza would never abandon her post. 

Natsu passed the break room, the custodian’s closet, and he tip-toed past old owner’s personal office. He quickly crossed the main floor space and rounded the bar. Mira gave him a weary smile and immediately sat down where she was. 

“Woa! Mira, I’m sorry I was late. Are you okay?” Natsu crouched down next to her and helped her to her feet. The bar was busy, but everyone seemed to have a drink and were satisfied for the moment. 

“Oh, it’s not your fault, Natsu. I worked a double today, Kagura’s sick.”

Frowning, Natsu helped Mira into a chair. “You should have called me, Mira. You work too hard.”

“I’m fine, Natsu. I just need a nap!”

“I’m calling Lisanna to get you. You’re too tired to drive, it’s no better than being drunk.”

Mira sighed, but knew he was right. She also knew Natsu wasn’t going to back down. The stubborn boy didn’t compromise when it came to the safety of his family, and the members of Fairy Tail had become his family, Mira thought with a smile. The angry, broken boy who came looking for work had changed. Mira just wished he would find a girlfriend to completely erase the haunted look he still got sometimes. She once thought it could be Lisanna, but that never did work out. So Mira would wait, and watch.

***

When Natsu got home sometime around three in the morning his apartment was empty, save for Happy. He wasn’t sure why, but he was disappointed. The crazy blonde girl seemed like fun. 

Wait. What was her name?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay okay okay I know this was SUPER short, but I wanted a good faith chapter, to prove there was more in the works. Thanks for reading!


End file.
